Chinese scientists have produced a commercialized version of a high-performance server, which could be used for a precise 36-hour weather forecast on a specific area with just 30 minutes of computing work.

Weather forecast experts said their on-duty servers need 40 hours for the same work.

Shi Dinghuan, spokesman of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said Monday the supercomputer, Lenovo DeepComp 6800, which was jointly funded by the ministry and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), would be equipped with a trunk node in the proposed national grid.

According to an internationally recognized appraisal, DeepComp 6800 can perform 5.324 trillion floating-point operations per second. Its practical running speed, measured by Linpack benchmark which is a standardized test by computing linear algebraic equations, reaches 4.183 trillion per second.

A recently published rating on top 500 global super servers showed that DeepComp 6800 was ranked the 14th in terms of its Linpack performance. The Chinese-made server was the second best in its overall efficiency.

The high-performance computer also exhibits some innovative technologies and designs, according to a national expert team that includes seven CAS academicians.

Qian Depei, coordinator for the national high-tech research and development project on high-performance computers and related software, said building the national grid is their main target in achieving breakthroughs in the coming couple of years.

The grid combines several high-performance servers, large-scale databases, expensive lab equipment, communication equipment and others into a giant network, which supports nationwide, or even worldwide, scientific research.

During tests, DeepComp 6800s were used for computing data from oilfields, weather forecast stations, disease control centers and physics labs.

With its 16 central processing units, experts from the computer's manufacturer Lenovo Group said the server could support 18 billion hits every day.

Shi said his ministry welcomes enterprises such as Lenovo to join the national high-tech research and development projects.

"Lenovo's ability to fulfill the mission is very impressive," Shi said.

Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of the board of Lenovo, said his company is going to invest more resources into research and development.

(Xinhua News Agency December 10, 2003)